


Shadow of a Storied Past

by Gammarad



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game), Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Coruscant (Star Wars), Dromund Kaas, Gen, Mustafar (Star Wars), Pre-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Remix, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 15:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19814857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: akaGhost of a Bleak Future (the We Didn't Start the Fire remix)While Darth Maul travels back to the past, the Inquisitor gets a glimpse into the future. He's not too thrilled with what he sees. But, as always, he has a cunning plan to improve the situation.The Inquisitor's idea of what will improve the situation does not line up very well with the ideas of the Senator from Naboo.





	Shadow of a Storied Past

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Ghost of a Bleak Future](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18582097) by [flirtoptionthree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flirtoptionthree/pseuds/flirtoptionthree). 



> Thank you to **flirtoptionthree** for allowing me to remix the gift story I received in this year's May the Fourth exchange.
> 
> Thanks also to Entropy_Empathy and Asymptotical for suggestions that I incorporated into the story.
> 
> To make this story more comprehensible, read _The Ghost of a Bleak Future_ before reading this remix.
> 
> Quite a few comments there requested to know what was going on to make things end up how they did for Maul. Now you can read on and find out.

Everyone was gone.

Mustafar was different, Nox thought, when he returned to life and to consciousness. The landscape around him was lifeless and empty now. No, not empty —there were presences at a distance, though not living. A structure was being built by droid labor at the base of the volcano. 

Nox narrowed his eyes, or tried to. They did not respond to his attempt. He was — not fully in his body, he discovered. He could not move without great effort, nor could he rise to his feet. He tried to shout for his Jedi ally or the soldier, but his voice would not cooperate either.

What had happened? Had magma from beneath the planet's crust burst forth and killed everyone? Or had they seen it start to erupt and run away, leaving him behind?

Not that he cared if they deserted him. What need did he have of such allies if this was how dependable they were. He would have reached out with the force to sense them, but the pervasive dark force energy of the planet blocked his attempt. So intense was its regard in return when he had finished staring into it, captive, that it drew him down to dreamless sleep.

Thankfully it was quick. He woke a short time later and found he could move his body again. No longer was he half-traveling outside it, half in. He glanced at the builder droids; they were immersed in their task and paying him no heed. Still no sign of the two Twi'lek, his supposed allies. They seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Perhaps they had fallen into a crack in the ground and been swallowed up.

Nox walked toward where the ship was. Before he got even a quarter of the way, he was surprised to spot an entirely different ship. Its form made an arresting contrast to that of the Jedi's converted Corellian freighter, with a feeling of power he associated with his own, lost Fury, though smaller and sharper in silhouette. This was a fighter craft equipped as a starship, a quarter the size of the Jedi's Defender and, if he was any judge of it, much deadlier. He approached cautiously. 

Hover droids of some model Nox had never seen before surrounded him, running a beam over his form, apparently finding it to their liking. They whistled in the universal droid language of mathematics, indicating the affirmative.

The hatch of the ship opened and Nox went inside.

It was a one-man ship, as he'd expected from its small size. There was a fold down bunk and a pilot's seat and a tiny fresher corner and that was all the crew accommodation it extended to. Not even a mirror. His nails were a mess and he assumed the rest of him was likewise. Whatever had happened to kill the Jedi and his men, it hadn't done much good to Nox either. Probably killed him too; he would've come back to life as usual, aided by his ghosts.

Speaking of the ghosts. Where were they? He didn't sense them at all. Sometimes they didn't speak for extended lengths of time, but he usually could sense them. Strange.

He pulled up the star maps. _Dromund Kaas._ It had been too long. As he set the course, he thought about -- did he dare think of it as home? It seemed he did. The power and glory of the Sith Empire in physical display. The strength of the shining metal and light that resisted the ever-encroaching jungle, much as the Sith themselves stood and resisted the encroachments of lesser cultures.

There was a lot of reading material in the ship's holonet. He pulled some up and started in surprise when he noticed the date. How many _thousand_ years since the Treaty of Coruscant now? The Republic would endure so long? How had the Sith not conquered it in so much time, he could not understand. Too much to read; he took in too many facts too quickly and they blurred into nonsense in his mind. 

Taking a break, he slept. Soon the ship landed itself under control of its strange complement of droids and when he woke, he was on Dromund Kaas.

It was a tragic mercy he had slept through the approach. He might have seen it all at once. He might have perished or disconnected again from his body from the shock. But at least he would have been spared the slow agonizing revelation of exactly how far his home had fallen.

Making his way through the fragments of what used to be a towering city pulled down by the ravages of time crashed his wonderment at the time jump and made him mourn what had been. How had they, the people of the last millennia, let Dromund Kaas of all places fall into such disarray? How had they dared? Darkness pulled itself around him, sharing the emotion. The places of power on Dromund Kaas were not as strong as those on Mustafar, but they were many, and each rippled toward him in the Force. Lightning crackled around him, threatening to burst its bonds, to destroy what little remained here. 

Nox mastered himself. He would not stoop so low as to throw bolts from overwhelming despair. And as he did so, a spring of useful dark energy poured into his body, giving him strength.

He conceived a plan, or rather, the plan sprung to mind, full formed, as he pulled himself together from the brink. He would — not fix this, that was impossible, but start it back into the right direction again. He knew how to achieve that lesser, still desirable goal. Two parts, this plan. He set out to commit a location on Dromund Kaas to memory, one that matched now what it had looked like before. The Dark Temple approach was the perfect starting point. It had always been overgrown. 

Nox focused when he found the perfect location. A nook in a wall that had not fallen when the rest of the Dark Temple had, smooth even bricks at its base. He recalled clearly where this was in his own time; he had spent enough hours exploring here years ago. Impressionable hours; this place had mattered to him. It still did. He would not forget. Promising himself sincerely that, returning to his own time, he would see the matter through, he then reached out lightly with the Dark Side to feel what lay beneath. He felt a surge of triumph, it was there! _Yes._

That accomplished, at least in spirit, Nox strode with growing satisfaction pushing aside the unhappiness he felt at the fallen Dromund Kaas landscape. He pulled out the unsatisfactory lightsaber and used it to butcher a few of the larger local fauna. That felt good.

Bloody and more relaxed than he had been since before he reached Mustafar -- one of his drinking-and-conversation rounds with Cedrax and Holiday, he thought, was the last time he'd felt so good -- Nox paused at a natural clearing. This, he thought, used to be where the Revanite camp was. The stream bubbled through it enticingly. He bent to take a drink from a pool through which flowed a heavy current that kept it clear, yet its surface remained still. He saw his reflection.

It was Nox and it was also not, he saw in the reflection. Almost the same face, similar tattoos and skin tone, but the eyes were different, natural: the eyes he'd been born with and carried until his power grew great enough to transform them. The tattoos, too, were not exactly what he bore. They were as if someone who had known him well had attempted to copy them from memory, without a holo to reference. He wondered at this, whether it was the similarity of appearance that had enabled the transfer into the future. Whether the owner of this very body was even now — well not now, but for a similar span of time in the past — inhabiting his own body. 

After quenching his thirst, Nox sat to meditate, first on his speculations, then reaching out with the Dark Side to try to sense what he could about this future world, knowledge that would not have been entrusted to the holonet. A strange barrier met his mind when he attempted to sense beyond a few dozen yards away. It whispered in his head that he must hide his power to reach far, lest it be found what he could do exceeded what his Master thought him capable of. There was a great deal of affection in this barrier. Whoever had made it _cared_ for him. Or for who they thought he was, anyway.

That means of investigation blocked, Nox returned to the ship and went through the scraps and pages of flimsy that he found aboard. The name of the body he was inhabiting was "Maul." How primitive: a name redolent of crude violence. Nox supposed it might be intended to cause its bearer to be underestimated. He found such simple mind games beneath him. The one who gave orders to Maul was called Sidious. The base of operations of these individuals was Coruscant.

The seat of the Republic. They worked, he assumed, to undermine it. Or perhaps in this time the Sith had simply taken over running the Republic and that was why they had allowed their own Empire to fade away. He did not care for that, either. There was little point to ruling if you must pretend to be allowing everyone to give you permission to do so.

He thought he would go to Coruscant and see what he could accomplish there before he had to return to his own time. Before he set the course to the Republic capital, he marked carefully on the ship's map of Dromund Kaas the spot he had chosen on the Dark Temple approach, with a rune that on Kaasi maps indicated a place one had left something of importance.

Stretching out on the bunk to meditate, he found that if he were very careful not to disturb the alignment of the latent Force, he could glimpse beyond the kindly barrier. It was well designed to teach the one it protected subtlety and again he found himself approving of whoever had made it. He got a parsec out and could no longer maintain his trance, slipping into sleep again.

When he woke, he was in orbit around Coruscant. Using the same technique, he felt his way passively through the barrier and took in the lay of the Dark Side on the Republic capital. The holonet had informed him the planet still held that position. He felt fiercely angry that Coruscant had lost none of its finery, if anything more built up and shining than before, while Dromund Kaas… that line of thought was only a distraction from what he had to do. Nox focused again and this time he sensed the greatest concentration of Dark Side power was in a certain building, a tall one surrounded by an ornate complex. 

Looking it up on the Holonet, he saw that his idle guess was probably correct: it was the Senate tower itself. No doubt this Sidious had set himself up as Supreme Chancellor and was ruling the place, that or one of his confederates. But he sensed only one powerful Sith and it was decidedly odd. Why would only one of them be on the entire Republic capital, and that one in the Senate? He saw no reason not to go in and ask. The one called Sidious knew this body, this Maul, after all. It would no doubt be simple to maneuver him into revealing everything.

But, he thought, it might be obvious at a glance to one who knew him well that the person inhabiting the familiar body was _not_ Maul. Especially a powerful Force user who was used to the Force signature of his minion, and now faced a Dark Lord instead. Nox was not burdened with any humility about his strength in the Force.

So he decided to enact a ruse. He would pretend he had only just awoken in this body, that he was disoriented. That would make him both underestimated and considered a lesser threat than his evident power level would indicate: a much more appropriate, complex sort of mind game that Nox fully embraced.

* * *

The red-skinned alien sat in the cantina on one of the lower levels of the Senate tower drinking the same sort of thing humans drank, a liquid comprised mostly of water, glucose, and ethanol. Perhaps he was the aide of one of the Senators from one of the further planets of the Republic. 

A protocol droid approached him. It spoke one of the most common Iridonian languages, having recognized him as a Zabrak by the arrangement of horns on his head. He ignored the droid and took another sip from his cup.

As the protocol droid tried another of the languages of Iridonia, the Zabrak man slumped forward. His drink spilled across the counter. 

"Watch it," the bartender said, nudging the Zabrak. 

"Uhhhhh," he said, a low coarse muttering that slowly became Basic. "Wha. This."

"Was there something in your drink, sir?" the protocol droid asked.

"Where am I?" the Zabrak asked, his voice slurred. Perhaps it was the drink making him sound so unclear. It was as if he did not know how to use his own mouth to form words. 

He stood, wavering unsteadily on his feet, and the droid took his arm. "Please allow me to guide you to the nearest medical service droid," the protocol droid requested politely. There were quite a few, since inebriated politicians were a common sight in this cantina and those nearby.

The Zabrak leaned on the droid and allowed it to take him to be given a health check.

"He is in fine physical health," the medical droid declared. It beeped in binary at the protocol droid giving the full readout of the Zabrak's condition. "This individual is even in peak condition. He should not be impaired by the amount of alcohol he has consumed. Therefore I believe there is a possibility of some other toxin. I have not yet identified it."

"No toxin, doctor," the Zabrak drawled in Basic. "This is … I recognize this place. This is Coruscant. Why don't you take me to see the Supreme Chancellor? She and I have some unfinished business."

"She?" The protocol droid objected. "Chancellor Valorum has never … perhaps you have forgotten the last several years since Chancellor Kirames Kaj stepped down? But you do not appear old enough to have been part of the Senate so long ago, sir."

"What? When did Chancellor Kaj step down then?" The Zabrak sounded curious.

"That was in 7937, sir. Year 3613 after the Treaty of Coruscant."

The Zabrak put his fingers to his temples. "So long," he murmured. "The Supreme Chancellor," he demanded again.

"I am afraid that is not likely to be possible, sir," the protocol droid said, its tone conveying an anxiousness to please that its words undermined. 

Four Republic Senate guards stepped into the cantina. They appeared to be going off duty, ready to have a few drinks. The Zabrak stood, swayed on his feet for a moment, then balanced. He waved a hand in their direction. "You have come to take me and this droid to see Chancellor —" he paused for a moment, glanced at the protocol droid and back to the guards. "--Valorum," he concluded. 

The guards stood at attention. "Please, sir, come with us. Chancellor Valorum will see you immediately." The Zabrak began walking, a guard on each side of him. 

The other two formed similarly around the droid. "Why must I?" the droid began.

"You seem helpful," the Zabrak murmured. The droid did not like the expression on his red and black face and decided it best to give up any attempt to argue further.

* * *

Palpatine was finishing a conversation with the senator from Corellia when he saw the familiar Zabrak walk by, flanked by Republic officers. What could possibly have brought him _here_ he thought, finding no possible _good_ reason. Maul was supposed to be on Mustafar supervising an important construction project. If he had had to return to Coruscant early, he should have sent word ahead in the usual manner, via one of the LiMerge shell corporations' facilities. If he had come in person without being able to send word, he should have been in the Works at the LiMerge headquarters itself, not here in the Senate Tower. 

Something had gone very, very wrong.

A faint thread of the force was pulled by the master of subtle workings and the guards escorted Maul and, for some reason, a protocol droid, into Palpatine's office instead of Valorum's. The guards left, the Zabrak and droid remained behind, and Palpatine entered after that, closing the door behind him and securing it.

"Why, what have we here? I don't believe I had a meeting scheduled at this hour," Palpatine said in a completely convincing jovial uncle sort of voice. 

"Supreme Chancellor, my name is Nox." The Zabrak spoke in a Basic drawl so unlike what Palpatine had expected that he came closer to dropping his act than he had in months. Not that close, though. An old, old way of speaking, one he had only heard in the spirits from ancient holocrons and the oldest surviving recordings: a Kaasi accent.

Still, he was not about to give a single thing away. "I'm afraid you are quite mistaken, Nox. I am merely the Senator from Naboo."

"What? Why would you be? From a planet I never heard of?" The head tilt, the expression, none of it was Maul. Another nightbrother? One who liked to study ancient _accents_? Was this an embassy from the Dathomir witch, another attempt to set things "right" between them and retrieve what she persisted in viewing as her son rather than his pupil?

"I find it hard to believe you have never heard of Naboo, Nox." Palpatine gave his best condescending yet friendly smile to the primitive yet erudite surprise visitor. "You clearly know of much more obscure places, by your way of speaking." 

"In my time, Dromund Kaas was far from obscure," Nox said.

"If I may say so, claiming to hail from the heyday of the Empire's power is not plausible," the Senator said. "Yet, you intrigue me."

The familiar face of Maul took on a sly, inviting smile that made the Senator distinctly uncomfortable. "That was not so difficult, was it? Now tell me. What game do you play? Where are the others?"

"The other Senators have offices all around us," Palpatine said.

Nox smirked. "The others like us. I care nothing for the Republic's figureheads. You have chosen to allow them to believe themselves your equals -- and betters. How unbelievably generous of you."

"It is a strategic choice," Palpatine said with steel in his tone. He did not like being reminded, especially not by someone who clearly understood exactly how humiliating it all was if you knew the truth.

"Strategy that involves bowing to your lessers on a daily basis." Nox appeared to be enjoying himself. 

Palpatine thought perhaps he could use this arrogance to have his guest from the past let secrets out that he might not intend to share. He salved his pride as he always did, by knowing he was smarter and sneakier and he only let others command him to better manipulate them. 

The protocol droid spoke up for the first time. The Senator had almost forgotten it was there. "You did ask to be brought to the Supreme Chancellor," it reminded Nox. 

"Because I thought certainly the source of power would bear that title." Nox looked from the droid back to Palpatine. "And you shall put me off no longer. Tell me why you are the only Sith on all of Coruscant." Lightning crackled from the air around them. Palpatine barely managed to shield himself. He had not expected direct attack. 

The Dark Side strength of the intruder — who, Palpatine had begun to realize, was occupying Maul's body, and didn't just look like him — was beyond anyone Palpatine had ever met other than Plagueis himself. It was even, perhaps, equal to Palpatine's own. His flesh, being that of Maul, was not as rife with midichlorians as the Senator's, but the sheer virtuosity with which he directed the lightning spoke of finer control than Palpatine had ever achieved. 

The lightning struck flammable wall hangings and carpet and books on shelves, and small fires broke out everywhere. Palpatine could not be sure of defeating this visitor from — could it truly be thousands of years in the past? — and he did not dare keep him to question further, much as he wished it were possible. The knowledge he could have learned! He mourned it as he knew he could not take the risk. Instead, he used a trick he had had to use long ago to free his mind of his own mentor's bindings — and used the Dark Side to expel the intrusion out of the Zabrak.

* * *

Maul woke in his own body. He was in the Senate tower. The room was on fire.


End file.
